Maison Margiela Spring 2027: Opposites Attract

by · WWD
Maison Margiela Spring 2027 Ready-to-Wear Collection at Paris Fashion WeekDominique Maitre/WWD

The colorful, droopy dried flowers planted on the walls of the venue — an homage to Raf Simons’ 2012 debut at Dior — were slightly misleading. This wasn’t a show about death, memory or the past. Instead, it was full of fresh ideas, some of which worked — and others that didn’t.

The coed collection was about subverting tradition, looking at Parisian atelier techniques with new eyes and Glenn Martens’ quest to balance the innovative with the commercial. He called it “Hard and Soft,” and his aim was to fuse structured garments and tailoring with dressmaking and draping.

It was big, uneven in parts, but interesting to watch the models move down the runway to a screechy electric guitar soundtrack that made the seats in the venue vibrate.

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The sculptural coats and jackets, some of which looked like they were shaped from clay, were a highlight. They included the tailored trench that opened the show with dramatic folds around the neck and an apron-like front, and a lineup of jackets ranging from dark denim to satin tuxedo. They came with stiff, built-in corset panels at the front and soft, folded necklines and lapels.

Martens pressed those corset panels into even more looks, building them into silky T-shirts, turtleneck sweaters and long dresses with draped fronts and tie-dye prints. Sometimes the corset was worn on the outside, as in a long, fluttery white dress with a bodice made from flattened silverware that hugged the body.

Don’t worry — the designer didn’t wrestle his men into corsets, but nodded to the shape of those stiff panels with lovely trousers that had thick tuxedo stripes down the sides of the leg. He also dressed them in deconstructed jackets and shirts with the buttons folded and hidden inside.

Some of the looks had no underpinnings at all, including a lineup of long black or white knit tunics with open work like fishermen’s nets, or boxy dresses with slashed cutouts at the waist.

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Martens sent a lot of ideas onto the runway and the show could have had more focus. He also could have buried some of those flower prints, which looked exotic and summery scattered across a shiny, stiff pink skirt but resembled 1970s tablecloths on dresses, coats and boots. Martens’ garden of ideas is lush enough without them.